Johnston Green Days Crit

Ahh, my first crit... Well, it was pretty much what I expected in that I suffered and assumed I might blow chunks my the end of the race. I had fun in a sadistic and twisted sort of way. In reality, I could've done a lot worse and possibly marginally better. I managed to run out of gas on the final lap and dropped a couple spots at that point. I finished 9th out of 21 starters so I felt pretty decent about that.

The course really was pretty simple with only two 180 degree turns at the ends. Nobody really seemed to be hammering the turns in our race. Well, with the exception of Keith who hammered the turn a little too hard in the wet and had his bike slide out from under him. For the most part, if you played it right you could close up any gaps at the turn by breaking late and hard and then diving into the turn as most of the guys were braking early and often. I'm pretty sure I went harder through the turns on a few practice laps than we did during the race.

I'll shoot some pictures up later as I still have to upload them to Flickr. I definitely didn't leave much out on the course with stats from the ride being 183 avg hart rate, 193 max heart rate, 22.6 avg speed, and 99 avg cadence. I hit my highest heart rate as I crossed the line for the finish so at least I timed that right. I did take one small flier just to say I led a lap, but other than that it was all about hanging onto the pack and making sure I didn't fall too far back.